The present disclosure relates generally to communication networks, and more particularly, to forwarding multi-destination packets in a network with virtual port channels.
Networks such as data centers often use a small percentage of available CPU, storage, and memory capacity. This results in deployment of more servers than are necessary to perform a specified amount of work. Additional servers increase costs and create a more complex and disparate environment that can be difficult to manage. Many network managers are turning to virtualization so that resources can be shared across a network. Virtualization is a technology which allows one computer to do the job of multiple computers by sharing resources of a single computer across multiple systems. Virtualization allows servers to be decoupled from underlying hardware, thus resulting in multiple virtual machines sharing the same physical server hardware.
The servers are coupled to the network via one or more access layer switches. There may also be one or more interface virtualizers (also referred to as Fabric Extender (FEX) or remote replicator) interposed between the switches and servers. Since the server may be connected to more than one interface virtualizer (e.g., at a virtual port channel), it is important to prevent transmittal of duplicate packets to the server.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.